Representation of male feminsm

You're Canadian. That's all that needs to be said. Pierre Trudeau emasculated nearly every man that was a man, years ago. It's a tribute to his effectiveness that even today, guys like you thank him for it.

There needs to be some factual basis to ground a discussion like this, or it escalates into mud-slinging.

Is there an 'essence' to gender? If not, then crow et al, you are simply advancing one particular set of gender roles limited to one place in time and space (maybe even your own household) to a unversal level. If so, if male and female biology is different, then to what degree is it different? Obviously anatomically - but psychologically (and then, to what degree. What matrix of segregated social roles would be vindicated by the biological differences?)

Let's free this debate from what ever people have invested in deeper ideological positions like traditionalism vs liberalism.

Let's look at facts. Unless people are willing to present research on gene-environment interactions, or things of that nature, then people may as well sling feces at one another. K?

After that attempt at clarification I will advance one positive-ish argument: One of the ironies of this debate is that we began by talking of certain men - biological human males - who fit more 'feminine' profiles. You might put this down simply to this being a timeless male 'strategy' used by certain TYPES of males (so called 'Beta' males), but even then we have to admit that gender is multi-faceted and not some binary thing.

Nobody is fundamentally defined by gender roles : I agree. "Gender roles" are culturally defined and therefore possible to destruct.

Either one takes the position that women=women and men=men, or they don't.

That choice is one of the dividing questions in modernity.

Imagine that indeed, on average, women=feminine and men=masculine. So traditional gender roles are vindicated.

But you would have to acknowledge there will be exceptions. Nothing in biology is completely binary. So we are going to have the odd masculine women and the odd feminine man (this is assuming that, generally, men=masculine and women=feminine).

Would you still seek to confine these few masculine women in feminine social roles and these few feminine men in masculine social roles?

The only point I am personally interested in, is the idea that any discrimination is bad. Even amoebas discriminate. I follow their lead. I discriminate. Other than that, gender can go fly a kite. I know what I am, and that's all I need to know.

Phoenix

The only point I am personally interested in, is the idea that any discrimination is bad. Even amoebas discriminate. I follow their lead. I discriminate. Other than that, gender can go fly a kite. I know what I am, and that's all I need to know.

As I stated I'm against all prejudicial discrimination.

Also when I was speaking about gender roles I was referring to "a set of social and behavioral norms that are generally considered appropriate for either a man or a woman in a social or interpersonal relationship." (*) My point is that gender roles are just that, "roles", and people who are self-realized don't follow roles, don't do things just because it's the norm. I'm saying that while psychological differences between male and female are obvious (while their qualities and quantities are open for debate of course), ultimately the self-realized individual determines their own nature. At the end of the day it's not that there are many different kinds of men and there are many different kinds of women, it's that there are many different kinds of people, gender being a major but still single factor in the equation of a person's nature.

Come a certain point, to say that a man isn't manly mistakenly assumes that biological gender exists isolated apart rather than interactively with all the other variables constituting a person's makeup. In the vast majority of cases, biologically being a man or a woman is obviously an either/or proposition, and a 'girly' man remains most decidedly male. When viewed through the prism of the human condition in all its facets, however, biological gender ceases to be so black-and-white, and demanding otherwise is like trying to categorize a pool of water into droplets.

Phoenix

And anyway, even if huge swathes of the population believe whatever they believe, who has the right to tell them they're wrong? Oh, I forgot: left-wing-messiahs.

Discrimination is, by definition, ignorant because it ignores facts in favor of assumption, unsubstantiated opinion or mistaken faith. It has nothing to do with subjective morality. A person can have a strong emotional revulsion towards homosexuality, but to label homosexuals as criminals like Russia is doing, that, making an ignorant leap from subjective to objective, is discrimination. They're wrong because knowingly or unknowingly their stand is against the evidence.

Sane people make better use of their time than Googling new and even-worse things to be outraged at. So somebody, somewhere is inconvenienced. So what? I am so very, very sick of left-wing activists, ruining everybody else's lives, as well as their own, because they 'care' so much.

Would you still seek to confine these few masculine women in feminine social roles and these few feminine men in masculine social roles?

Indeed I would. Because to trump the reality of the majority with the self-serving desires of a tiny minority, leads directly to where it has, in fact, led us: to a place of utter chaos.

Let's leave very broad, dystopic value judgements of society aside and focus more narrowly if possible.

Wow, so you're not even going with my weaker thesis. In not doing so you're holding that a society in which social roles are LESS TAILORED to individual ability is better than the converse. This just seems like inflexible dogmatism, to me.

I thought the *motivating idea* of fixed gender roles is, in the first place, because such a system tailors social roles to individual ability. If it's not that, then what is it based on? Ideological dogmatism?

I know that there's discrimination in this world but the world is not a monolithic place where there's great misery everywhere. We can't talk about Russia in the same way that we can talk about Venezuela for exemple. The definition of discrimination and second class citizens can be complicated because there's a lot of factors involved in them.

By the way, a capitalist boss who exploit people in sweatshops do not necessarily discriminate them, just in case you think that exploitation equals discrimination. It maybe not your case but to many people wilingly or unwilingly confound the two terms.